Un.
I watch as Richard Castle stands by the bed, staring at the woman whose soul is sitting in my arms.
"Mia?"
She doesn't respond, just continues to lie there, cold, and still, and dead. This is when I leave, because the next thing that usually comes is the shouting, the crying.
I stop near the apartment door, the hazy sunlight filtering in around me, making the woman in my arms almost glow. In the other room, Castle is curiously quiet.
I drift through the door then, but the air in the apartment is still heavy with me. I'm sure Castle can practically taste it, and that he'll spend the rest of today trying to wash the flavor away.
I pass Kate Beckett in the hallway.
XXX
Deux.
Castle is tied to a chair, staring me in the face. (I see fear, but there are other things too, other emotions that sit in his ocean blue eyes and staunchly refuse to disappear.)
I take a step back from him, and casually walk around the small room. This is not the way he should die. But then, that's not my decision. That choice currently belongs to the man holding the gun (the man whose hands are already covered in so much blood. Really, if I were Castle, I would not be feeling too optimistic.)
Then, as quickly as all of this has happened, it's over, and Castle is still alive. I follow the man (the murderer, the one whose colors are so dirty I have trouble making out the hues) down the stairs and out of the apartment complex.
The sound of sirens wrenches the still night air apart, and the darkness is suddenly flooded with red and blue lights.
Kate Beckett has come to save Richard Castle.
XXX
Trois.
I stand by Raglan's body, a little off to the right, and wait for just the right moment to move in and snag his soul.
Five, four,
There's blood on Beckett's shirt, a large blossom that covers her chest. I stare at it, and wonder if it's hers, because I really don't want to collect two souls here, today, in this poorly lit diner with its scuffed linoleum and faded silverware. (It's too commonplace a site for Beckett's last stand.)
three, two,
Glass shards glint up at me from the floor, and when the fading sunlight bounces off of them, it's as though the floor is covered in slivers of crystal.
* * * An Observation * * *
Beckett's reflection bounces around the larger shards of glass, until there seems to be dozens of her, all with unchanging expressions: her face is set, her lips drawn together in a tight line. For a moment, her reflections all turn and look in my direction, and I feel as though Beckett's looking at me, not through me like most people make the mistake of doing.
Castle reaches over, touches his hand to Raglan's neck, and stares into his unseeing eyes. This will be a scene that haunts him for a very long time.
one.
I swoop in and snatch up Raglan's soul between my fingers.
XXX
Quatre.
I stand in the shadows of the hangar, watching as Beckett leans over Captain Montgomery's body. (See? I can be rather respectful; I allow her this time to cry over the man she trusted with so much.)
Castle stands back a respectful distance as well, although I can tell he wants to do something. I half expect him to take Beckett up in his arms and hold her, whispering soothing words to her, but he doesn't.
I wish he would.
XXX
Cinq.
There's something in the way that Richard Castle sits on his plastic chair with his bloody hands folded that's almost heartbreaking. This is what stops me in my tracks.
His colors are fraying. There's giant rips and tears, the bold yellows and soft blues melting into one another.
I don't want to take her from him.
This is when it becomes hard, when I stop and watch, because then I have time to think, to see. I pull myself away from the lobby (because if I don't soon, I'll forget my place, and begin letting everyone live).
Kate Beckett is lying on an operating table, surrounded by red. Red, red, red, and she's currently balanced somewhere between me and the man sitting out in the lobby on a hard, uncomfortable chair.
I need to leave now, because the colors have stopped distracting me.
* * * A Note * * *
Kate Beckett will not die.